He buzzed for Miss Wagner and she came into his room, looking so prim and proper it was difficult to realise that in her work she had to deal with matters that would have shocked many modern girls who reckoned to know all the answers.
“Miss Wagner,” he said, “some time ago we had a report through from Palma concerning an Englishman who’d been in trouble. I don’t know what happened to that report…”
“You threw it into the wastepaper basket,” she said, and looked reproachfully at him. She worshipped him in a completely sexless manner.
“Did I. Hell! I wanted…”
“But naturally I rescued and filed it. If only you’d be a little less impetuous…”
“Whatever would we do without you?” he said hastily.
She blushed.
*
Fusil had to report every morning to Superintendent Passmore and give details of the crime over the past twenty-four hours and this tended to irk him since he was, in his own estimation, more than capable of running C.I.D. without supervision. But there were also occasions when he voluntarily went down to the other’s office and talked over problems. Passmore was well into his middle age and close to retirement and therefore without professional ambition or any axe to grind. He had a keen analytical mind which was rounded off by a great fund of common sense and this enabled him to see all sides of a problem. His advice was usually valuable.
He listened to what Fusil had to say, then leaned back in his chair and for once his round face looked solemn. He joined forefinger and thumb of each hand together to make a triangle. “It’s thin,” he said, looking at Fusil through the triangle.
“I know,” replied Fusil, eager to accept the unlikelihood of what he’d been saying.
“A telephone call from a call box immediately after the briefing could so easily just be his telling his wife he’d be late.”
“But whatever the regulations, that sort of call is certainly usually made on one of the telephones here.”
Passmore shook his head. It was not a denial of what Fusil had said, merely a reminder that a personal call could be too personal to be made in the hearing of fellow policemen.
Fusil, in the unhappy position of arguing against his own wishes, and instincts, took from the pocket of his coat the letter from Palma, now smoothed out. “This is what came from the Spanish police. I’ve checked with London. The originator was Rowan.” He passed the letter across.
Passmore skimmed through it. “You’re quite certain C.I.D. haven’t at any time been interested in this man, Longman?”
“Quite certain. I’ve checked myself.”
Passmore lit a cigarette with careful movements. “There’s surely nothing to say his name didn’t officially appear in any case, but Rowan had cause to check him out, found he wasn’t of interest, then let the matter slide?”
“Of course,” said Fusil sharply, hating the discussion. “But the regulations are definite. No request for information may be put through Interpol without authority from a D.I., or higher. Sergeant Teesdale should never have passed it, but he obviously presumed Rowan had cleared everything with me. If this was a straightforward, routine enquiry, why didn’t Rowan refer it to me? And how can Longman have been concerned in any case that was on our books without my knowing a thing about him?”
“I’ll repeat what I said earlier, Bob, it’s very thin.” Passmore tapped the ash from his cigarette. “But obviously you’ve got to check the matter out, and quickly, because this station is going to explode with rumours.”
“I ordered P.C forty-one to keep his trap shut.”
“D’you still believe in miracles, then?”
Fusil swore.
*
Originally the jail had been small because Mallorquins are by nature honest — their only real defect in character, an explosive temper — and in any case crime is usually limited in a small island. But when the tourist invasion started, the jail had had to be extended. Visitors unfortunately brought with them their own low standards of honesty and they committed crimes too serious to be overlooked or to be dealt with by unhurried deportation.
The governor of the jail was small, nearly bald, with finely chiselled features, and a pair of very sharp blue eyes. He strongly believed in international cooperation and when he received the request for information on Longman he was upset to discover how little anyone knew about the Englishman. He decided to find out what he could about the man.
First off, Longman was held in what was virtually solitary confinement, since he only left the cell for meals and two periods of half an hour for exercise: at such times, he was carefully kept away from anyone who could speak English. He became wretchedly miserable, distressed, and even outraged, to discover that in Mallorca imprisonment was still punitive in nature.
When he was feeling at his lowest, a second prisoner, Suarez, was put into his cell and to his joy he discovered Suarez spoke English so that now he had someone to moan to. He moaned. The police had had no right to arrest him, the law should have discharged him, the English consul should have had him released, the prison routine was vicious, the food was greasy, and if he’d known what was going to happen to him just for agreeing to carry a briefcase into England, he’d have refused to do it for ten times the thousand pounds he had been offered.
Suarez, in for theft — he was from the Peninsula where, as every Mallorquin knew, standards of honesty were much lower — had a word with a warder and next morning his name was called after breakfast and he was ordered to report to the governor’s office.
“Señor Governor,” said Suarez, standing smartly to attention in front of the desk, “I have done exactly and precisely as you asked of me.”
“I am most grateful,” replied the governor, a man of great courtesy. The chief warder stood on his right.
“I have listened and listened to a great deal of troubles. He thinks all we Spaniards are barbarians.”
The governor shrugged his shoulders. His expression did not change, although he objected to the implication that he was a Spaniard. He was a Mallorquin.
“Once or twice, Señor Governor, I was very tempted to belt him in his over-large and very busy cake-hole.”
“It is fortunate for everyone that you were able to control your instincts.”
Suarez saw the chief warder’s expression and realised that it would be better if he stuck to the facts. “He says that what he’d been going to do was pick up a case from a man he should have met in the bar and take this case to England. And for that he was to be paid…” Suarez paused for effect. “A thousand pounds.”
The governor made a note on a sheet of paper. “Has he said what he expected to be in this case?”
“No, Señor Governor. Naturally I tried to find out, but he’d no idea.” Suarez spoke ingratiatingly. “Señor Governor, maybe it is permitted for me to guess?”
“It will not be necessary. You are to be thanked for your cooperation.”
“Perhaps I might now be permitted to return to my own cell?”
“I think that in order to give this Englishman the opportunity to learn that a Spaniard is truly not a barbarian, you should return to occupy the cell with him,” replied the governor. He did not like informers and he had a strong sense of humour.
*
Fusil read the letter from Mallorca. The authorities begged to inform their illustrious colleagues in England that certain information had come to hand which was being passed on immediately in view of the previous enquiries. Longman, regrettably held on the charges previously mentioned, had said that he’d been waiting in the bodega in order to take delivery of a briefcase which he was to carry back to England. In payment for this, he had been promised one thousand pounds. Their esteemed colleagues in England would be able to judge whether this information was of any significance, but they would like to say that in any case it was of the greatest pleasure to have been in communication with the members of so widely acclaimed a police force.
Fusil stared down at the
carefully typed letter in an English which retained a little of the grace there would have been in the original Spanish. A thousand pounds for carrying a briefcase into England. Only one racket paid that sort of money — heroin smuggling. Longman had been part of the line. He’d got drunk, assaulted two coppers, been hauled off to jail, and the line had been broken. The organisation had had to discover whether his arrest had been fortuitous or whether the police had thought the switch had been made and had picked up Longman hoping he could be pressured into giving them vital information. So the organisation had subverted a policeman who’d been on to the Spanish authorities, via Interpol, to discover the truth about Longman’s arrest.
Fusil’s expression became vicious.
Chapter 13
Although he’d tried to assure himself it was purely imagination, caused by a guilty conscience, Rowan had been unable to ignore the small, but significant, signs of hostility shown by many of the uniform men. It had frightened him because he knew of no reason why they should have picked on him. Then he was called to Fusil’s office and when he entered and saw the expression on both Fusil’s and Braddon’s faces, he realised something catastrophic had happened.
“Sit down.” Fusil pointed at a chair set squarely in front of the desk.
Rowan sat down. With a quiet desperation, he thought of Heather and Tracy.
“You know why I’ve called you here?” demanded Fusil harshly.
“No, sir.” Rowan noticed Braddon was taking notes.
This made him certain that Fusil wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of the facts and therefore was allowing only the more senior members of the C.I.D. to hear the evidence at this stage.
Fusil picked up his pipe from the desk and fiddled with it. For once, he couldn’t decide how best to interrogate a witness, mainly because his instinct — or his wishful thinking — still was to refuse to believe in the possibility of Rowan’s guilt. “Does the name of Longman mean anything to you?” he finally said.
It was obvious that they had found out about his enquiry through Interpol. “Yes, sir. Harry Longman. I’m afraid I forgot to report that I sidestepped the proper procedure and personally put forward the request to our liaison officer to contact the Spanish authorities.”
“Why were you interested in Longman?”
“I heard a whisper he was connected with the mob that’s moved into town, sir.”
“In what way connected?”
“The whisper didn’t say so I hoped to learn something from the details of his arrest. In the event I didn’t, so I forgot him.”
If you’re going to lie successfully, thought Fusil, make use of the facts which must be known, admit to any obvious mistakes you’ve made, and leave things vague. If you spent much of your working life interrogating villains, you learned many of the rules of successful villaining. “Why was he arrested?”
“He got drunk in a small bar and assaulted two policemen. It was just a common-or-garden drunk and disorderly.”
Fusil lit his pipe and puffed out thick streams of acrid smoke. “Where was this bar?”
“I don’t remember, sir.”
“Where was he staying on the island?”
“I never knew.”
“But that would have been very important if you were investigating a possible tie-in with the mob.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Come on, you’re not stupid. If the bar was a long way from his hotel, why was he at that bar? Was the bar near an area in which sightseers would naturally go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yet you were investigating him?”
“Only up to the point where I discovered it was a case of drunk and disorderly.”
“The most superficial investigation would have turned up the fact that the Calle Juan de Moyá is on the outskirts of Palma, in a dreary, working class suburb, and nowhere near any place a casual sightseer is ever likely to visit.”
Rowan made no comment.
“Do you know the real reason why he went to that bar?” asked Fusil.
“I know nothing more than I’ve told you, sir.”
“It was to make contact with a man who was to hand him a briefcase he was to fly to England, for which service he was to be paid a thousand pounds. So what does that tell you?”
Rowan had to answer. “Drugs.”
“Heroin,” amended Fusil. “So your original information was quite right and Longman was connected with the new mob. But you knew that a long time ago, before Longman himself divulged the fact in jail. So how did you know?”
“Like I told you, I heard this whisper.”
“From whom?”
“You know we never name our informants, sir,” said Rowan, certain what must now follow.
“Normally, no. In this case, it is essential. Who passed you the whisper?”
Name a man and that man would be questioned by the police, to give the lie to the story. “It was a telephone call that came in one morning. I don’t know who the caller was.”
“You’d have recognised the voice of one of your own grassers.”
“He wasn’t a regular.”
“Why should a new grasser call you up and spill you the story?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the way it happened.”
“How much did you pay him?”
“I didn’t, as I wasn’t called on to pay him. I never heard from him again.”
Fusil clamped the pipe between his even, white teeth and he knew a hatred for Rowan that he had consciously to control. Rowan was the traitor. When a man grassed he either demanded money, thereby implicitly admitting to the sordidness of his betrayal, or he made his reasons, such as jealousy, very clear in order not to be classified with the ordinary informer. But Rowan had been clever in that there was, and probably could not be, real proof that his story had to be a lie. “How could you have decided the lead on Longman was useless without checking all the facts?”
“We’d so much else on our hands at the time that I accepted the report of a bar brawl at its face value.”
Fusil’s eyes were narrowed, as they so often were when he was really angry. “You were at the briefing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do when that briefing finished?” Rowan could not yet see from which direction the danger was really coming. “I left the station to make some enquiries.”
“In connection with what case?”
“The muggings in East Bratby Cross.”
“Where did you make these enquiries?”
“Out and about. I was hoping to get a lead, but didn’t.”
“Were you officially on duty?”
“Not by then, no.”
“So you didn’t log your enquiries?”
“No, I didn’t. They were totally inconclusive.”
“How did you get to Bratby Cross?”
“I caught a bus.”
“From the stop down the road?”
“Yes.”
“Then why were you telephoning from the call box up the road?”
If he’d been hoping to throw Rowan by that sudden question, apparently out of context, he failed. Rowan had been present at any number of interrogations conducted by Fusil and knew very well the other’s habit of seemingly being intent on one line of enquiry when in fact he was only trying to lull the witness into complacency before snapping in a question based on information not previously disclosed. Rowan had realised a trap was being set and when time became important guessed Fusil knew he had made that telephone call. He was, therefore, ready with his answers. “I was telephoning my wife, sir, to say I’d be late home and that was the nearest phone — since we’re not allowed to use the ones in the station for personal calls.”
Fusil remembered Superintendent Passmore’s words. He put his pipe down on the desk, squarely faced Rowan and said, his voice hard: “You’re lying and from the moment you came in here you’ve been lying.”
“No,” said Rowan. “I’ve no reason to lie.”
“You’ve every reason. You were telephoning someone in the mob to warn them about the search operation.”
Rowan was shocked to hear the words spoken aloud, even though he had been expecting them. “That’s ridiculous.”
“In the same fashion, your enquiries to Palma were for the mob, not the police. That’s why there’s no record of it and I wouldn’t have known about it but for the Spanish authorities.”
“You’ve no right…”
“You’re a traitor. You! One of my detective constables.” Fusil finally allowed his hatred and scorn to ride high. “You’ve betrayed the force and you’ve betrayed us. What were your thirty pieces of silver? A thousand quid? Or did you play for just a few hundred, like a punk?”
“You’ve no proof.”
“We’ll get it, don’t prop up your snivelling little soul on that score…” He stopped, picked up his pipe and re-lit it, forcing himself to calm down and become, as near as he ever could, the impartial interrogator he was supposed to be. “I shall make a report to the chief constable. He will certainly detail a senior detective from another force to carry out a full investigation. You will hold yourself ready to answer all questions he, or anyone else, may put to you and to help in every possible way. Is that clear?”
Rowan didn’t answer. Braddon looked across and his bloodhound’s face was filled with contempt, but also with a questioning uncertainty.
*
Tracy had gone to bed, laughing, playing the fool, so obviously on top of the world. It was one of the many ironies of the situation that she had found the happiness she had so desperately needed for so long only after her parents had been overwhelmed by trouble.
Heather said, her voice little more than a whisper: “What will they do, Fred?”
He nursed the glass in his hand. “Turn every stone over twice, searching for the evidence they know must be lying around somewhere.”
“But what will it mean to us?”
“They’ll check our standard of living, our bank accounts, our bills, our receipts, looking for signs of all the extra money they’re so certain was used to bribe me.”
She began to sound panicky. “But we’ve got the colour T.V. and things like the cocktail cabinet and all the carpets and curtains. And what about the two cars…”
The Murder Line (C.I.D. Room Book 8) Page 11